The Core Blog » dantehttp://blogs.bu.edu/core
news, events, and commentary from the Arts & Sciences Core CurriculumMon, 23 Mar 2015 14:30:13 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1Tenth Circle Added to Rapidly Growing Hellhttp://blogs.bu.edu/core/2015/03/18/tenth-circle-added-to-rapidly-growing-hell/
http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2015/03/18/tenth-circle-added-to-rapidly-growing-hell/#commentsWed, 18 Mar 2015 14:46:00 +0000http://blogs.bu.edu/core/?p=4411To current and former Core students, Dante’s Inferno brings to mind images of a nine-tiered Hell filled with sinners of various sorts. CC102 students, studious as they are, know the nine circles and their inhabitants like the back of their hands.

Reporting by the Onion, though, indicates that Dante’s descriptions are out-of-date: recent years have spawned sinners “far more evil than the original nine circles were equipped to handle.” Built for the likes of downsizing CEOs, telemarketers, and TV-exercise-show personalities, the new tier is known as Corpadverticus, or the Circle of Total Bastards. It promises to alleviate the serious overcrowding issues at the price of skewing the realm’s carefully arranged allegorical structure.

To read more about Inferno’s recent expansion, check out the full article here.

]]>http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2015/03/18/tenth-circle-added-to-rapidly-growing-hell/feed/0Joseph Luzzi on Dante, and why some books stay and others gohttp://blogs.bu.edu/core/2014/09/02/joseph-luzzi-on-dante-and-why-some-books-stay-and-others-go/
http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2014/09/02/joseph-luzzi-on-dante-and-why-some-books-stay-and-others-go/#commentsTue, 02 Sep 2014 11:38:19 +0000http://blogs.bu.edu/core/?p=4221Students just entering the first-year Humanities haven’t yet encountered the Divine Comedy of Dante in the Core classroom… but for sure, they won’t forget it. Many Core alumni report that their exploration of Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso in seminar with their Core classmates was a formative part of their undergraduate experience. Accordingly, we keep our eyes open for any mention of our man Dante in the world of letters beyond BU.

Here’s the latest clip. Over in the estimable Paris Review, in an essay titled “The Great Unread”, Joseph Luzzi asks the question: “Why do some classics continue to fascinate while others gather dust?” In the following excerpt, he explains the reason Dante’s great work didn’t go the way of so many texts lost to the modern reader in the dust-bin of literary history:

In 1756, Voltaire proclaimed “nobody reads Dante anymore,” and indeed the Enlightenment had little time for Dante’s religious allegories and Christian doctrine. He was about to go the way of Manzoni’s Betrothed: a classic that was once much admired but now rarely read. Then the Romantics came along and rediscovered Dante, celebrating his individuality and heroism—those same qualities from Inferno that Dante would reject in Paradiso. But that didn’t matter to the Romantics. They creatively misread Dante, and in so doing made him the literary touchstone he is today. Our interest in Dante’s hell, the universality of its concern with questions of justice and crime and punishment, overrides our indifference to his medieval vision of Christianity.

What do you think — is this a plausible and sufficient explanation of the enduring success of the Divine Comedy? A cynical (non-Core) explanation for why some books stick around and some books are forgotten is: The books that stick around are the ones the professors put on the reading list. There’s a dismissive truth to that explanation, but Core people know there’s a lot more to the matter than this kind of pat answer can supply.

]]>http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2014/09/02/joseph-luzzi-on-dante-and-why-some-books-stay-and-others-go/feed/0Dante’s Inferno… in LEGO!http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2014/06/09/dantes-inferno-in-lego/
http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2014/06/09/dantes-inferno-in-lego/#commentsTue, 10 Jun 2014 00:25:50 +0000http://blogs.bu.edu/core/?p=4106The recent LEGO film shows that these popular construction toys are still thriving after more than half a century. Dante’s Divine Comedy has thrived for nearly seven centuries. Romanian LEGO artist Mihai Marius Mihu celebrates both by constructing scenes from each level of the Inferno. Here we share some of our favorites!

The rest can be viewed here. Which ones are your favorites? Let us know in a comment below!

The Onion rarely fails to deliver… this time it is their excellent twist on Dante’s Inferno which has caught the Core’s attention. All those who remember CC102’s Dantean struggles will appreciate this. Here is an extract:

CITY OF DIS, NETHER HELL–After nearly four years of construction at an estimated cost of 750 million souls, Corpadverticus, the new 10th circle of Hell, finally opened its doors Monday.
…
“A nightmarishly large glut of condemned spirits in recent years necessitated the expansion of Hell,” inferno spokesperson Antedeus said. “The traditional nine-tiered system had grown insufficient to accommodate the exponentially rising numbers of Hellbound.”
…
“In the past, the underworld was ill-equipped to handle the new breed of sinners flooding our gates–downsizing CEOs, focus-group coordinators, telemarketing sales representatives, and vast hordes of pony-tailed entertainment-industry executives rollerblading and talking on miniaturized cell-phones at the same time. But now, we’ve finally got the sort of top-notch Pits of Doom necessary to give such repellent abominations the quality boilings they deserve.”
…
Among the tortures the Corpadverticus Circle of Total Bastards boasts: the Never-Ending Drive-Thru Bank, the Bottomless Pit of Promotional Tie-In Keychains, and the dreaded Chamber of Emotionally Manipulative Home Shopping Network Products.
…

His face contorted in the Misery of the Damned, a Disney lawyer said: “It’s hell here–there are no executive lounges, I can’t get any decent risotto, and the suit I have to wear is a cheap Brooks Brothers knock-off. I’m beeped every 30 seconds, and there’s no way to return the calls. Plus, I’m being boiled upside down in lard while jackals gnaw at the soles of my feet. If I could just reach the fax machine on that nearby rock, I could contact some well-placed associates and work something out, but it’s just out of my grasp, and it’s out of ink and constantly blinking the message, ‘Replace Toner Cartridge, Replace Toner Cartridge, Replace Toner Cartridge.'”

He then resumed screaming in agony.

]]>http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2013/10/18/the-onion-tenth-circle-added-to-dantes-hell/feed/0Above the Doorhttp://blogs.bu.edu/core/2013/05/22/above-the-door/
http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2013/05/22/above-the-door/#commentsWed, 22 May 2013 14:07:22 +0000http://blogs.bu.edu/core/?p=2554The sign pictured below was posted, by unknown parties, outside the entrance to the CC102 Final Exam in May 2013.

]]>http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2013/04/05/salvador-dali-dantes-inferno/feed/0The Lego Infernohttp://blogs.bu.edu/core/2012/05/14/the-lego-inferno/
http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2012/05/14/the-lego-inferno/#commentsMon, 14 May 2012 14:53:59 +0000http://blogs.bu.edu/core/?p=1706With final papers done and turned in, exams finished, and the semester turning over into the start of the summer break, CC102 students might be feeling a bit like they’ve emerged from the final level of the Inferno — “Procrastinators”?, skipping Purgatory altogether to end up directly in the Paradiso-like environs of summer break. So here’s a bit of Dantean lightness to speed the transition along. Via io9.com: “Sculptor Mihai Mihu has built this fantastic and creepy nine-part collection of LEGO dioramas based on Dante Alighieri’s Inferno. Witness the Divine Comedy depicted in tiny plastic bricks, from the River Styx to the frozen head of Satan.”

No epic survived the welter of history unless both its language and story were unforgettable. From a plot posterity demands both immediate pleasure and enduring moral significance. An epic narrative must vividly and unforgettably embody the central values of a civilization — be they military valor or spiritual redemption. Only a few poets at a few fortunate points in history had met this challenge successfully. To understand these poems, [Robert] Fitzgerald insisted, one not only needed to study the cultures and literary traditions which created them. One also needed to measure them against life. The ultimate measure of Homer, Virgil, and Dante’s greatness was that their poems taught one a great deal about life, and that life, in turn, illuminated them.

— Dana Gioa, from his essay “Learning from Robert Fitzgerald”, in The Hudson Review vol. LI, No. 1, Spring 1998